Monday, December 31, 2012

History lessons for the day

StrategyPage puts the political struggles of present day China into the perspective or China's long history of being controlled by clans. The main "danger" to the Deng clan that controls China is the growing middle class.

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Also from StrategyPage: the problem of unemployed in Arab countries that have millions of foreign workers (many of whom are Filipinos).

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I may have linked to this previously, but the cross cultural problems of working with Afghanistan that you won't read about in the newspapers.

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From the Diplomad: What it is really like to be in a country where the embassy people might be attacked.

put down coffee before reading: it's that funny.

Not so funny is his prediction that the Benghazi scandal will quickly be forgotten.

I am glad also to report that I won my bet with a former colleague on the Benghazi fiasco. I bet him that nobody would be forced to resign: that would be the price of the truce between Foggy Bottom and Chicago. "You don't fire us Foggy Bottom sorts, and we don't go public with how cretinous a foreign policy you Chicagoans have instituted. Deal? Deal."

The initial reports indicated I might have lost the bet, as supposedly four State officials either were forced to resign or dismissed . . . yeah, right. My colleague called to collect on his bet; I delayed paying as I was skeptical of the initial reports. Then  SUDDENLY the truth came out. Nobody had been axed! It was all a three card monte game with no money card on the table. 


These stories have a single thing in common: That what was going in the official reports had nothing to do with reality.

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One is reminded of the over 100 thousand veterans from Gulf War I who have Gulf War Syndrome. Outside of veterans groups, who cares? Even when the NYTimes noted that the troops were really injured by American policies, and not neurotic, it only made page a20... even though their disability may have been  caused by exposure to nerve gas (either from SCUDS and/or from blowing up Saddam's WMD's, plus a suspicion that pills used to protect against nerve gas might have made things worse. Discussion HERE.). In other words, a coverup, even though similar symptoms were found in Kurdish populations who also had nervegas exposure.


Why is this important?

Because Syria has lots supplies of various poison gases, (maybe even some of Saddam's missing WMD) and the big  story of the collapse of Syria is: who will get their hands on them? A lot of terrorist types have "volunteered" to fight with the local rebels...


From StrategyPage:

The big fear in the West is that Assad may turn his chemical weapons (especially the nerve gas) over to Hezbollah or these weapons may be seized by rebel groups that are also Islamic terrorists intent on attacking the West and Israel. Hezbollah, as a creation of Iran (in the 1980s), could have gotten nerve gas from Iran at any time since then. But that stuff, if used, could be traced back to Iran with dire consequences for Iran. The Syrian stuff, created by a Syrian dictator recently removed from power, would be another matter. In any event, this is not a huge deal as nerve gas is vastly overrated as a terrorist (or military) weapon.

I suspect there is a scramble to get them by all, (even Russia, which worries about Chechnian suicide bombers might be helping) before they get diverted to kill westerners.

President Obama said if Syria used nerve gas against civilians, the US might intervene. So voila, instantly we read reports that Homs was bombed with nerve gas and...well, the US (and more importantly, Israel) said the reports were wrong.

Did Tom Clancy write a novel about this? How about 24 or Homeland?





as for us, when a bus is bombed, it might be terrorism or just that the bus company didn't pay a bribe to the terrorist organization, so the company is being warned.

Kill too many people, and you get killed. So the bombs are usually small, and that lets the headlines here be small too.

So what is today's big headline? Firecrackers....

Crackdown on ’crackers PNP ordered to arrest revelers exploding ‘bombs’
they'd like to ban them, but since ignoring laws is a major industry here, I doubt they'd bother.
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